er,
and let me read them to her. Do you know, I can make her laugh and cry,
reading my poor stories? And sometimes, when I feel as if I had written
out all there is in me, and want to lie down and go to sleep and never
wake up except in a world where there are no weekly papers,--when
everything goes wrong, like a car off the track,--she takes hold and
sets me on the rails again all right.

--How does she go to work to help you?

--Why, she listens to my stories, to begin with, as if she really liked
to hear them. And then you know I am dreadfully troubled now and then
with some of my characters, and can't think how to get rid of them. And
she'll say, perhaps, Don't shoot your villain this time, you've shot
three or four already in the last six weeks; let his mare stumble and
throw him and break his neck. Or she'll give me a hint about some new
way for my lover to make a declaration. She must have had a good many
offers, it's my belief, for she has told me a dozen different ways for
me to use in my stories. And whenever I read a story to her, she always
laughs and cries in the right places; and that's such a comfort, for
there are some people that think everything pitiable is so funny,
and will burst out laughing when poor Rip Van Winkle--you've seen Mr.
Jefferson, haven't you?--is breaking your heart for you if you have
one. Sometimes she takes a poem I have written and reads it to me so
beautifully, that I fall in love with it, and sometimes she sets my
verses to music and sings them to me.

--You have a laugh together sometimes, do you?

--Indeed we do. I write for what they call the "Comic Department" of
the paper now and then. If I did not get so tired of story-telling, I
suppose I should be gayer than I am; but as it is, we two get a little
fun out of my comic pieces. I begin them half-crying sometimes, but
after they are done they amuse me. I don't suppose my comic pieces are
very laughable; at any rate the man who makes a business of writing me
down says the last one I wrote is very melancholy reading, and that if
it was only a little better perhaps some bereaved person might pick out
a line or two that would do to put on a gravestone.

--Well, that is hard, I must confess. Do let me see those lines which
excite such sad emotions.

--Will you read them very good-naturedly? If you will, I will get the
paper that has "Aunt Tabitha." That is the one the fault-finder said
produced such deep depression of feeli